Ben Christie (The Urban Rescue Ranch)

Ben Christie is a rancher, farmer, and a popular YouTuber.

He has 2.8M subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘The Urban Rescue Ranch’.

Introduction-

Benjamin Christie was born on 12 December 1997 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States and grew up in Pittsburgh.

His father works as an ophthalmologist.

Ben’s brother, Andrew, studied for a masters in Materials Science & Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Love for animals & outdoors-

At a young age, Ben was an avid fisherman and loved fishing in the freshwater and while in high school, he possessed a decent knowledge about animals.

Also, he along with his friends used to catch geese and pigeons downtown and loved spending time outdoors.

At the time, Ben’s other hobbies were rowing (he won a national medal), beekeeping, travelling, and javelin throw.

Education & career-

Initially, Ben attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas to study Psychology and Neuroscience.

After his freshman year, he realised that the career paths in this field of study were not sufficiently interesting and rewarding for him, so he switched to study Business at Baylor University.

Ben majored in sales in 2019.

After doing a couple of internships at Northwestern Mutual, and an internship at Owens Corning, he secured a sales job at Oracle in March 2020.

The chicken guy-

At the end of his senior year at Baylor University, Ben was bored and had a lot of free time, so he decided to start farming.

At the time, he was inspired by a few farmer YouTubers, Coyote Peterson, Steve Erwin, etc. to start farming.

Ben purchased a few ducklings and four chicks from the Tractor Supply Company and started farming as a hobby in a backyard near his campus.

Later, as they grew up and started laying eggs, he started selling the eggs on the campus and this earned him the name “the chicken guy” and “the animal guy”.

Becoming a rescuer-

Once, Ben rescued a little pigeon that fell off the nest and soon, became attached to it and this made him a rescuer.

Initially, watching YouTube videos helped him to learn about rescuing the pigeon and later, he received mentorship for wildlife rehabilitation.

Soon, people started handing Ben injured/abandoned squirrels, pigeons fallen off the nests, feral hog babies whose parents have been shot, kittens, etc. to take care of.

Soon, he developed a passion for learning about animals and rescuing them.

Ben has a rehab license, and he continued taking care of animals even after he started working full-time at his job.

Becoming popular-

Initially, Ben was posting videos on TikTok and after the COVID-19 hit, his videos on TikTok started becoming viral.

Due to COVID-19 he started working from home and this gave him an opportunity to film his animals.

Even though Ben’s videos on TikTok were doing well, he was not earning from TikTok and so, he decided to start a YouTube channel as it is possible to earn from YouTube.

He thought of using this income to at least cover the cost of the feed of his rescued animals.

So, on 3 December 2019, Ben started his YouTube channel, ‘The Urban Rescue Ranch’.

On 6 December 2019, he published the first video on his channel, ‘We Saved a Bird From Drowning! (More content coming soon!)’.

Quitting his job for ranch & YouTube-

While working at his full-time work from home job, Ben was taking the time out to take care of his animals, squirrels, opossums, deer, raccoons, ostriches, and a kangaroo.

At the time, he was publishing videos on YouTube, Patreon and TikTok and as he started earning money from YouTube, he felt guilty of stealing time from his full-time job.

Finally, due to the Snowmageddon Texas, Ben did could not work on his job as he did not have electricity, and water for three days straight and, his phone and laptop died, and this prompted him to quit his job on 18 April 2021 and he became a full-time YouTuber and a full-time rancher.

Also, he was not satisfied with his job and found it soul-sucking.

Later, Ben sold his house in Austin and bought a three-acre property in Waco and fixed the crack house there for animals and sold his car and bought a bus for the animals.

The first viral video-

Luckily, a day after Ben quit his job, one of his YouTube videos became viral and got five million views.

The video, ‘How To Survive A Rhea Attack (training Kevin p1)’ was published on 25 March 2021 and became viral after someone shared it on Reddit.

And from then on, most of Ben’s videos started getting good views.

A successful YouTuber-

As of November 2023, Ben has 2.8M subscribers on his YouTube channel and 720K followers on Instagram.

He started with filming and editing all his videos on his iPhone with iMovie but later upgraded to a camera.

Ben earns from advertisements on his YouTube videos, and merchandise, and he also accepts donations through his website and Patreon.

He also earns through the offspring of the fancy breeds of animals, and he also raises funds through GoFundMe.

Ben’s videos inspire many people, especially youngsters, towards farming, especially, sustainable farming and lifestyle.

A nonprofit-

The Urban Rescue Ranch is a nonprofit organisation.

Ben, at his ranch rescues animals and cares for them and later, rehomes them.

He has many animals like possums, pigs, cats, pigeons, chickens, prairie dogs, a kangaroo, ostrich, rheas, ducks, emus, turkey, goats, turtles, etc. and has a small team for helping him out.

Future plan-

In one of 2021 YouTube videos, Ben stated that his future plan is to move to Indonesia.

He chose Indonesia due to its cheap cost of living and as he feels that animals get more mistreated there than in the United States.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Ben Christie?

Share with me in the comment section below.